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Celebrating the winners of the Fi Europe Innovation Awards 2025

Food industry stakeholders celebrated as the winners of the Fi Europe Innovation Awards were announced at a ceremony in Paris.

Since their inception, the Fi Europe Innovation Awards have become an opportunity for the food and beverage ingredient sector to celebrate R&D breakthroughs, sustainability initiatives, game-changing ingredient launches, and more.

The award ceremony was particularly special this year as attendees also gathered to celebrate the 30^th edition of Fi Europe, the global annual meeting place for thousands of food industry professionals.

Read on to find out which company scooped up first prize in each of the categories.

Dairy Alternative Innovation Award

Time Travelling Milkman won first prize for its ingredient, Oleocream, a one-to-one replacer for dairy cream made entirely from sunflower seeds and water. Its formulation mimics the sensory profile of dairy cream while offering scalable, sustainable, and versatile functionality across applications from cream cheese to sauces and desserts.

Lipodos Santiga was highly commended in this category.

Food Manufacturing Innovation Award

Tetrapak Air Jet scooped up first prize for its innovative cleaning system used for powder handling equipments. Unlike conventional CIP methods that use liquids, this technology uses the power of air jets, cleaning fast with minimal residual powder so that manufacturers can switch from one recipe to another quickly.

Highly commended for this award was Hosokawa.

Future Foodtech Innovation Award

Winner in this category was AKA Foods with its Intelligence Platform for Application Development. This solution integrates critical data sources and uses AI to empower application development professionals to pitch innovative concepts, product prototypes, and solutions in response to customer briefs.

Health Innovation Award

ADM won the health innovation award thanks to its ingredient, Lactobacillus Gasseri CP2305, a postbiotic that is postulated to modulate stress via the vagus nerve, offering innovation in mental wellness through gut-brain communication. As a stable, non-living cell derived from probiotics, it is formulation-friendly and suitable for use in products exposed to heat, moisture, or pressure, ADM says.

NIZO Food Research was highly commended in this category.

Plant-based Innovation Award

ICL Food Specialties won the plant-based innovation award with its ingredient, ROVITARIS SprouTx. This ingredient is a textured soy protein that addresses the sensory challenges of soy protein by using the power of germination. It has reduced off-flavours, enhanced umami taste, improved fibrous texture, optimised nutrition, and shortened hydration time compared with other textured proteins on the market, says the supplier.

Sustainability Innovation Award

OFI impressed the judges and won first prize for sustainability thanks to its Cocoa Compass, a sustainability ambition for cocoa, which sets goals for 2030 and reports on its progress. Since its launch, ofi says its cocoa business has established child labour monitoring in all managed programmes, achieved 100% traceability and deforestation monitoring in its direct supply chain, and that 44,000 farmers in its supply chain earn a living income.

Highly commended in this category was IFF.